Talk:Stamp/Card-Based Combat Sandbox
From what I've read on this system (and my initial interpretations of it), I will first say there are some interesting ideas involved. Namely the diceless aspect. I've seen diceless roleplaying games work, but they tend to operate on the premise of: The higher skill, given enough time, will always win, given equal, or near equal, circumstances. With that said, I suppose the initial questions are: #By what mechanic does this combat operate by? #Does skill matter other than as a prerequisite? #How much better is an 'enhanced body blow' than a 'body blow' for instance (this goes mostly into mechanics)? #Does a mere 'lucky dodge' work against an 'enhanced body blow', or at least mitigate some damage from such an attack? #Do things like strength and armor get any consideration? Ultimately, it comes down to: How would a sample combat go? The information on the page right now doesn't say a great deal on that topic, other than the implication that attacks are played, then posed, and defenses are played, then posed. There's cards, but no real mechanics for governing the use of them, especially if +taskroll is out of the equation, which really needs to exist before much in the way of constructive comments can be said. Sergeytov 08:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC) #I hadn't yet determined the precise mechanic by which this system would work. That's pretty much why I put it up for discussion. Ideally, I want to keep it as simple - and consistent - as possible to avoid a lot of second-guessing by players and shooting-in-the-dark of referees. #In the first draft, skill doesn't really matter except as a pre-req. However, I could imagine a referee looking at the +sheets of two players using opposing cards and determining that the player with the higher skill gets a mod based on the difference to break the "tie." #Enhanced Body Blow is like the Navy Seal version of the Body Blow. If you're not well-armored and you suffer an Enhanced Body Blow, it'll hurt a lot worse than Body Blow and probably floor you (but not knock you out). #Lucky Dodge might mitigate damage from an Enhanced Body Blow. I don't think it could beat it entirely. (However, please keep in mind that this IS just a first draft, these are only the first batch of ideas I had, and there would likely be a fairly expensive Blackwater training agency-style civvy countermaneuver against Enhanced Body Blow.) #By my reckoning, strength and armor would determine the full impact of an attack. So, yes, I might not be able to neutralize that Enhanced Body Blow card, but if I'm wearing armor that can absorb the blow, I'll be okay. The combat would probably play out like this: #Player A slaps Player B with a glove and demands satisfaction. #The ref arrives and has the players roll a stat to determine combat order. In this sample case, Player A wins the roll. #Player A and Player B scenepose the opening of combat. #Player A plays a Body Blow card. Player A poses the attempt to hit Player B. #Player B plays a Lucky Dodge card. #Ref compares governing A and B +sheets for the stats governing the two cards. If A's governing skill is higher than B's governing skill, B suffers a Body Blow. If B's governing skill is higher than A's governing skill, B avoids the Body Blow. #If B suffers a Body Blow, the damage can be mitigated by his armor (or amplified by A's strength). #Once damage is tallied and applied, if B's still standing, B has the option of playing an attack card (including possible call-for-reinforcements cards) or trying to end the fight with RP. #Cycle repeats until one of the players is incapacitated or both players break off combat. The real key question we want to answer is "What if I don't want to deal with cards at all?" I don't want to shut non-card folks out entirely, but if I cater to one it could undermine the other. (Why bother to get cards if someone can just roll against me? And why bother to roll if someone's just going to outdo me with a card?) A simple compromise might be to allow people without cards to roll, and give cards a "roll equivalency" in their description. So, Player A might not have any cards and a ref can give him a governing skill to +taskroll for a fight. Player A rolls a Good. Player B's Enhanced Lucky Dodge might have a roll equivalency of Great. The ref could check the +sheets of both players and determine any mods based on the governing skills. Perhaps Player A actually has two more skill levels in his governing stat. Suddenly, his roll is modded from Good to Superb, defeating Enhanced Lucky Dodge. None of this is final. I had the idea sitting at work yesterday and only started fleshing it out last night. I put it in a sandbox page specifically for hashing out the idea and seeing how we can best make it work in our environment - if it's even viable at all. --Stamp 11:55, 18 November 2007 (UTC) I will certainly grant it's a novel idea. I've played enough Magic that the idea of 'fighting' with cards isn't entirely foreign to me. I think the 'roll equivalent' idea may well be a really interesting idea. Not only do you give the 'attack' cards equivalents, but also the defenses, and pair them up. So 'body blow' and 'lucky dodge' might both have equivalents of 'fair'. The attacker plays 'body blow' and thus has a 'fair' roll, the defender plays a 'lucky dodge' and thus has a 'fair' roll result, and thus dodges. Then you could bill the cards as, "Do you /really/ need to hit that NPC, need a fair to do it, and hit him right now, or you never need to worry about hitting anything again? Well, you can either take your chances with +taskroll (remember, your skill levels are lower than NJ, in theory, so you might only have a fair in unarmed combat), with 60% odds, or play that 'body blow' move and get an automatic 'fair' result?" - In other words, you let the cards not modify, as in the original plan, but provide steady results. Sure, you might not get that legendary roll and look totally badass, but you won't be risking that 40% chance of failure either. In a scenario like that, someone who invests in unarmed combat is a force to be reckoned with in hand to hand, always, but someone can invest in enough cards and moves (especially military types) to be a threat. Add basic stuff for other weapon classes, and use some simple rules to show how weapons interact with each other, and suddenly you have added a really cool option without shutting anyone out. Sergeytov 12:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC) I wouldn't rule out the possibility of having cards that are the equivalent of a Legendary roll in your pocket. They'd just be pretty expensive. So, if a player gets the skill high enough and wants to invest in the card, they could maybe pull off the John Woo cinematic two-gun-flying-through-the-air-with-explosions-and-doves move. The idea definitely still needs fleshing out for ranged weapons, but I think there's a lot of potential here. --Stamp 13:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC) One major combat system at a time (especially since it'd be likely lucky dodge'd work against gunshots), but yeah, the legendary stuff'd be fun. Make it expensive, hard to get and such. - We start at the hand to hand level, can toss in weapons, then do ranged. I think it'll all fit together nicely enough. Maybe give some narrow groups a couple cards to do with specific weapons (Dealbreaker goodness, anyone?) There's the the modifier issue, but I think the big thing there is to just say, "Stated card level plus or minus standard modifiers (ie, differences between an unarmed combatant going up against someone using, say, a spear). Note the word 'standard' here, the idea being you go with only basic things like 'differences in weapon types' rather than worry about exact positioning. In this regard, cards would be far more stable than +taskrolls, and you'd make them desirable on that merit alone. More specifically speaking, you could probably do something like make the prereqs one level lower than the stated value for most things, for the civilian ones at least. So to get 'great' stated value cards, you'd need 'good' in the skill. Legendary cards would need superb. You can let the military cards do two levels over, so military cards with 'superb' effects require 'good' in a skill. - A system would need to be worked out to make sure costing for this stuff is fair, sure, but I think you could make something like that work. Not only that, but it'd work real well with the damage calculators I already have in place. The admin version basically +mcalcdamage /=/ - And that tells you exactly what to type in to do the wounds. So I think, if we went with this in this form, we could sell the system on the following points: #Stability of results. You know what you're going to get before playing it. #Enhancing narrative flow and drama. - You can make more 'cutscene' like actions by using the cards, which sometimes just looks cool. #It shows a difference between civilian and military types without completely screwing one or the other. Sergeytov 14:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC) I've been pondering a couple things on this. First of all, we should define a set of 'standard moves' with a roll equivalent of 'fair', I think. Secondly, we should make one of each of the 'basic moves.' This includes the standard stuff like belly blow, but also include a 'standard' tail strike or crotch crush, so long as the biological prereqs are met (ie, having a tail to use for a tail strike). Third on the list, I think, is adding moves that are used on body parts humans don't have, perhaps 'tail grab' or something that requires the adversary to have a tail to work. - Anyway, after we have standard versions, we can parcel out 'special' versions to different military groups for unarmed. Enhanced bellow blow to the UAO Fleet, advanced tail smack to the CFF, and the advanced crotch smash to the GS. As for specific values, I suspect we can make the 'standard' versions have fair value, while the military cards can be bought at the fair value (for a low amount of influence, allowing one to have more moves than a civilian, all else being equal, or a value where the effect is equal to a great, for more. - If we want to put ubercards in, we can figure that out at a later time, really. More important to get a core system up, but I agree with the assessment they should be expensive. Sergeytov 12:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC) Think we have some progress here (that and I fixed the vendor for now so I'm having a modicum of faith I can do this): Premise 1: The quality of the card indicates its basic equivalent level. So an attack with a 'mediocre' quality is the same as a mediocre grade attack/defense /before/ situational modifiers. So say someone were at a serious disadvantage and told to, say, roll unarmed combat at -2 for the next attack, and played a mediocre grade attack card, it would become terrible. This also allows the rare legendary card to get played to do really cool things in really tight spots. Premise 2: If a defense works on a given attack, regardless of the quality levels of the attack or defense, the blow is evaded/blocked/whathave you. Let's say Attack A and Defense A are paired up, which means Defense A is a specific defense to Attack A. Even if Attack A were superb and Defense A were of poor qualities, the attack would be negated. The balance, naturally, would be that you would have to buy that particular defense, so buying defenses without the skill to use them requires buying a lot of cards. Premise 3: The quality level starts, not at fair, but at poor, and 'haggling' is done via the appropriate combat skill. So unarmed combat cards would roll unarmed combat to determine how good of a card it is. More math than that would go into it to keep superbs/greats rare, but that's another matter. - The reason poor is suggested is fair dex would have a 60% evasion rate for a poor quality card, where fair would, bluntly, utterly hose most defenders. So we start with Attack A, Attack B, Attack C, and Defense A, Defense B, and Defense C. Say they're keyed to each other (DA counters AA, DB counters AB, and so on). Joebob buys Attack A (AA), has fair unarmed combat. The 'haggle' is rolled, and it comes up that Joebob gets a Good Attack A. Joebob then plays this card in a combat to get an automatic good roll. Provided a defender doesn't play a DA card, the defender needs at least a good to counter. Sergeytov 11:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC) Actually... it looks like all of this is done, now, all that must happen after this is, well, I'm having trouble making new vobjs to represent the attacks, but the basic code for all this works. Yeah, I know, embarassing. - All that has to happen now, for unarmed combat action cards to work is we start ganking names from this here page and figuring out how to key attacks and defenses. Okay, that /is/ kind of hard, but I'll wait until there's a thumbs up from your end to get the basics working here. Sergeytov 11:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC) I'll be around tonight. Maybe we can hammer away at some ideas. :D --Stamp 19:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC) So, I just got off from a 20 hour internet outage. - If this isn't some fluke, I'll be around to poke at idea-wise. Sergeytov 16:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC) Quick and Dirty list o' progress: *Attack version - Area required for attack to work - Defensive counter *Body Blow - Torso - Lucky Dodge *Kidney Punch - Vulnerable Organs - Twist and Pivot *Knee Kick - Knees - Defensive Jump *Sleeper - Airways - Defensive Elbow *Head Blow - Head - Defensive Elbow *Vicious Poke - Eyes - Whiplash *Crotch Smash - Genitals - Quick Sidestep *Hiss And Leap - User below 4', effective on targets 4-6' in height - Lucky Dodge *Tail Slap - Requires a tail - Defensive Jump *Spine Ripper - Spine - Twist and Pivot *Tail Grab - Tail - Whiplash Sergeytov 03:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)